Annual Christmas Tree and Neapolitan Baroque Crèche

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Angel, 18th century; Neapolitan. Attributed to Giuseppe Sammartino (Italian, 1720–1793). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Gift of Loretta Hines Howard, 1964 (64.164.8 a–c). The Christmas Tree and Neapolitan Baroque Crèche at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, a long-established yuletide tradition in New York, was on view November 29, 2003 through January 4, 2004 for the holiday season. The brightly lit, twenty-foot blue spruce—with a collection of eighteenth-century Neapolitan angels and cherubs among its boughs and groups of realistic crèche figures flanking the Nativity scene at its base—once again delighted holiday visitors in the Museum's Medieval Sculpture Hall. Set in front of the eighteenth-century Spanish choir screen from the Cathedral of Valladolid, with recorded Christmas music in the background, the installation reflected the spirit of the holiday season. The installation was made possible by The Loretta Hines Howard Trust. The Annual Christmas Display The Cherubs and the Angels The Origin of Restaging the Nativity The Museum's Crèche Figures Christmas Concerts in the Medieval Sculpture Hall Christmastide at The Cloisters

The Annual Christmas Display
The annual Christmas display is the result of the generosity, enthusiasm, and dedication of the late Loretta Hines Howard, who began collecting crèche figures in 1925 and soon after conceived the idea of combining the Roman Catholic custom of elaborate Nativity scenes with the tradition of decorated Christmas trees that had developed among the largely Protestant people of northern Europe. This unusual combination first was presented to the public in 1957, when the Metropolitan Museum initially exhibited Mrs. Howard's collection. More than two hundred eighteenth-century Neapolitan crèche figures were given to the Museum by Loretta Hines Howard starting in 1964, and they have been displayed each holiday season for more than thirty-five years. Linn Howard, Mrs. Howard's daughter, worked with her mother for many years on the annual installation. Since her mother's death in 1982, she has continued to create new settings for the figures that she has been lending to the collection. In keeping with family tradition, Linn Howard's daughter, artist Andrea Selby Rossi, now joins her mother each year in creating the display.

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The Cherubs and Angels
Every holiday season, the Museum's towering tree, glowing with light, is adorned with cherubs and some fifty gracefully suspended angels. The landscape at the base displays the figures and scenery of the Neapolitan Christmas crib. This display mingles the three basic elements traditional in eighteenth-century Naples: the Nativity, with adoring shepherds and their flocks; the procession of the three Magi and their exotically dressed retinue of Asians and Africans; and, most distinctively, a crowd of colorful townspeople and peasants. The theatrical scene is enhanced by a charming assortment of animals—sheep, goats, horses, a camel, and an elephant—and by background pieces serving as the dramatic setting for the Nativity, including the ruins of a Roman temple, several quaint houses, and a typical Italian fountain with a lion's-mask waterspout.

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The Origin of Restaging the Nativity
The origin of the popular Christmas custom of restaging the Nativity traditionally is credited to Saint Francis of Assisi. The employment of man-made figures to reenact the hallowed events soon developed and reached its height of complexity and artistic excellence in eighteenth-century Naples. There, local families vied to outdo each other in presenting elaborate and theatrical crèche displays, often assisted by professional stage directors. The finest sculptors of the period—including Giuseppe Sammartino and his pupils Salvatore di Franco, Giuseppe Gori, and Angelo Viva—were called on to model the terracotta heads and shoulders of the extraordinary crèche figures. The Howard collection includes numerous examples of works attributed to them as well as to other prominent artists.

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The Museum's Crèche Figures
The Museum's crèche figures, each a work of art, range from six to twenty inches in height. They have articulated bodies of tow and wire, heads and shoulders modeled in terracotta and polychromed to perfection. The luxurious and colorful costumes, many of which are original, were often sewn by women of the collecting families and enriched by jewels, embroideries, and elaborate accessories, including gilded censers, scimitars and daggers, and silver filigree baskets. The placement of the approximately fifty large angels on the Christmas tree and the composition of the crèche figures and landscape vary slightly from year to year as new figures are added.

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Christmas Concerts in the Medieval Sculpture Hall
As part of the Christmas celebration, concerts were performed in front of the tree in the Medieval Sculpture Hall.

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Christmastide at The Cloisters
The Cloisters, the Metropolitan Museum's branch in northern Manhattan for medieval art, also celebrated the holiday season with an array of events. Evergreens, herbs, and fruits linked with the medieval celebration of Christmastide decorated The Cloisters from December 9 through January 4, 2004. The medieval practice of decorating churches and halls with fresh greenery at this time of year had its roots in ancient customs. The arched doorways of the Main Hall were adorned with 2,000 ivy leaves, 1,500 hazelnuts, 1,500 rose hip clusters, and 500 lady apples. Sprigs of mistletoe decorated the candelabras placed in the Romanesque Hall. A sheaf of wheat bound with ivy stood in the lavabo in the Cuxa Cloister, and evergreen laurel garlands festooned the Italian ciborium in the Langon Chapel.

The Cloisters presented special concerts and lectures during the season.

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